Friday, March 9, 2012

Tomato Salad and Cucumber Meze, Part of a Simple and Delicious 15-Minute Mezze Plate

OK, I'll admit it right off the bat... I picked the two quickest (and certainly the easiest), recipes in Food From Many Greek Kitchens for the March Mezze Madness theme this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs. I wanted low effort and I got it with the Tomato Salad (Tomatosalata) and the Cucumber Meze. Each of these light meze salads has 5 ingredients or less if you don't count salt and pepper, and they go together in minutes. Add grilled pita bread, hummus and a can of dolmades (I always have one or two in my pantry), and you have a pretty tasty little vegan mezze platter in under 15-minutes.

Do I feel guilty about not making the pita, hummus and dolmades for the platter? Nope. I actually have made my own dolmades before waaaay back in the olden days when I Heart Cooking Clubs was Tyler Florence Fridays. Delicious, but MUCH more effort than I was in the mood for this week. I did make a batch of hummus last weekend but I seem to have made it my condiment of choice on practically everything I have eaten this week and I devoured all of it. Thankfully, my co-op makes an excellent one. So after getting home late on a stormy Friday evening, all I had to do was pull a pita out of the freezer and heat up the grill pan while chopping up a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber, pitting a few olives and mixing up the salads while the bread grilled. Once on the plate, with a glass of white wine, it made for a delicious dinner.

Tessa says, “In Greece a whole big beautiful tomato could make a meal, as it’s so good on its own, just with a little salt and olive oil. A salad like this works well next to grilled foods."

Cut the tomatoes into nice chunks. Put them into a bowl with the olives, capers and olive oil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Crumble the oregano over. Toss gently, and serve.

Tessa Kiros says, “This is extremely instant and extremely simple. The kind of thing you could eat a bucket of in summer. This recipe is easy to double, just reduce the olive oil slightly, using about 1 1/2 teaspoons."

Put the cucumber and lemon juice into a bowl and crumble in the mint. Add salt and pepper. Drizzle the olive oil over just before serving.

Notes/Results: These salads are quick and easy and have good flavor, making them a great choice for a mezze plate. I pretty much made the salads as the recipe stated--no major changes. I did use a local organic cucumber so I left the skin on. I also lessened the olive oil in the Tomato Salad down by about half--it didn't need more than that. Much as I love my cucumbers--especially with lemon and mint, the tomato salad, with two large, ripe locally-grown tomatoes, won my heart with all of its capers and olives. Both recipes were so simple and tasty that I will make them again.

You can see the March Mezze Madness going on at I Heart Cooking Clubs by going to the post and following the links.

Gorgeous platter, and no shame at all in adding a few store bought items. Tessa is absolutely right about the Greek tomatoes - they are the best I've ever eaten anywhere, unlike our tomatoes here in New Zealand this year, which have been very disappointing after a rather lacklustre summer. Still hope to be able to find enough good end of season tomatoes to give this a try.xo

Mahalo for visiting and for leaving a comment. I love reading them and they mean a lot!

All advertising, spam, inappropriate (or just plain rude) comments will be promptly deleted. I do appreciate your right to free speech and to your opinion but I'm not into mean, rude, or mean snarky (non-mean snarky is just fine!) ;-)

Home of Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

About Me

Originally from the beautiful but rainy Pacific Northwest, I have been living in beautiful and (mostly) sunny Hawaii for the past 15 years. Foodie and Certified Health Coach--I love all things related to food and cooking. I especially like making healthy food that tastes great.